[CCWG-ACCT] Fwd: US Senate Committee Hearing on 2016 Budget for Dept of Commerce: Testimony on IANA Transition

Sun Mar 1 00:11:39 UTC 2015

An FYI to all.... LEXIS NEXIS indicates the hearing transcript is
copyrighted. For whatever it is worth, Lexis Nexis has a challenge
representing that the words of that Senate Public hearing are copyrighted
to LN.
Sincerely
Carrie Devorah

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 5:37 PM, Greg Shatan <gregshatanipc at gmail.com>
wrote:

> All:
>
> Here's an email that I recently sent to the CWG.  In response, Seun
> Ojedeji noted the Senator's concern with the possible capture of ICANN by
> foreign governments in the long term, and that a key goal of the transition
> must be protecting ICANN from any possible capture as it continue to
> operate IANA.I believe this issue falls into the remit of CCWG, and needs
> to be in Work Stream 1 so that it is part of the package ultimately
> considered by the NTIA.
>
> Greg
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Greg Shatan <gregshatanipc at gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 12:23 PM
> Subject: US Senate Committee Hearing on 2016 Budget for Dept of Commerce:
> Testimony on IANA Transition
> To: "cwg-stewardship at icann.org" <cwg-stewardship at icann.org>
>
>
>
> All:
>
> The US Senate held a hearing on the Department of Commerce's 2016 Budget
> (2016 commences October 1, 2015). A transcription was just published, and
> I've excerpted (as is) the Senators' questions and Secy. Pritzker's answers
> relevant to the IANA Transition -- see below.  The full transcript may be
> found at:
>
> http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=102898&topicId=235950016&docId=l:2311907759&isRss=true&Em=4&md5=&sendDate=20150228
>
> (FYI, much more time was spent on fishing, the paper industry and weather
> forecasting than on IANA)
>
> Greg
>
> SEN. RICHARD C. SHELBY HOLDS A HEARING ON THE FY2016 FUNDING REQUEST AND
> BUDGET JUSTIFICATION FOR THE COMMERCE DEPARTMENT
>
>  February 26, 2015 Thursday
>
>  EVENT DATE: February 26, 2015
>
>  TYPE: COMMITTEE HEARING
>
>  LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.
>
>  COMMITTEE: SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
> JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES
>
>  SPEAKER: SEN. RICHARD C. SHELBY, CHAIRMAN
>
>  WITNESSES:
>
> SEN. RICHARD C. SHELBY, R-ALA. CHAIRMAN
>
> WITNESSES: PENNY PRITZKER, SECRETARY, THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
>
>
>
> …
>
>
>
> SHELBY: Senator Langford.
>
>
>
> LANGFORD: Thank you. Thanks for being here as well.
>
>
>
> PRITZKER: Thank you.
>
>
>
> LANGFORD: I'm grateful to be able to have the conversation. I want to talk
> a little bit about where we stand with ICAN (inaudible) conversation and
> DNA. So my questions--I'm sorry, DNS, not DNA. DNA would be fun to talk
> about as well, by the way, if you want to talk about that.
>
>
>
> The budget request has a note in it that I thought was interesting. It
> says FY 2016 NTIA will continue to develop, implement and advocate policies
> positioned in the U.S. to meet growing complexities and political
> challenges related to internet governance and the domain-named system. Tell
> me the status of where you are headed on this. And obviously Congress has
> spoken back on it and is a little hesitant. So specifically, while you're
> talking about the status on it, how are you balancing the foreign policy
> objectives with United States commerce? And I mean commerce as a whole of
> our business world and how dependent we really are on this internet.
>
>
>
> PRITZKER: Well, let me start by saying our NTIA role is stewardship of the
> internet. And so moving--our goal has been to continue to move ICAN to a
> multi-stakeholder model. And, in fact, we deal directly with ICAN and the
> leadership of ICAN and their CEO is coming in tomorrow.
>
>
>
> LANGFORD: Can I interrupt for just a second? The question there is the
> why? And I think it's the foreign policy question.
>
>
>
> PRITZKER: Why?
>
>
>
> LANGFORD: Why try to move that outside of our stewardship? Has it been a
> problem that we've been the steward with it? Why remove American
> stewardship from the internet?
>
>
>
> PRITZKER: Well, the challenge and we--we're not giving up our stewardship
> of the internet. But the challenge that we face with the ICAN-IANA
> transition is this is--and, first of all, we're not going to give up our
> position of overseeing the IANA domain name situation unless we can
> ourselves there's a multi-stakeholder process and it's not going to be
> jeopardized, that there's going to stability and resiliency and security in
> the domain name system and that it meets the needs of global customers, and
> it remains that the internet will remain free and open.
>
>
>
> The challenge we face in our role is the perception of our goal in the
> global environment. There is a lot of pressure, as you said, from foreign
> governments to, in essence, take over control of the internet and try and
> create places where governments are in control of what's happening with the
> internet. We think that is the wrong direction to go, and therefore we feel
> we're really an oversight. ICAN is actually performing the IANA functions.
> And so our goal is that ICAN continue to perform those functions, but the
> appearance of our engagement creates this notion that the U.S. is a
> government in control and that's against where we ultimately--we want to be
> able to argue with the rest of the world. That's not what we want to see
> for the internet.
>
>
>
> LANGFORD: Right. I understand. And the skepticism is when we release the
> first generation, there may be some good oversight of that. And then what
> happens five years from now, etc.? So what happens with China and Russia? I
> just want to be able to express some continuing skepticism.
>
>
>
> PRITZKER: Senator, I share your concern about that. And one of the
> criteria that I've said is we've asked for ICAN to explain to us how
> they're going to be accountable to a multi-stakeholder process and there
> cannot be what I call a hostile takeover of ICAN.
>
>
>
> LANGFORD: Correct, and I would affirm that.
>
>
>
> …
>
>
>
> KUNTZ: Let me ask about a very different field for a moment, if I might,
> which is ICAN. When I was in the private sector, I did some work around web
> domains and website acquisition and control. We had a trademark, the
> company I was in, that had been inappropriately taken over as a web domain
> by a company with no relationship to it, and I got involved in this.
>
>
>
> This was a long time ago and I was struck at how at that point NTIA was
> playing a critical role in oversight of ICAN, the Internet Corporation for
> Assigned Names and Numbers, which I think is widely known to the small
> community of people who pay a lot of attention to this. And I'm frankly
> very concerned that there is a proposal to transition ICAN completely away
> from the Commerce Department oversight and management, and I just want to
> make sure that ICAN is really prepared to make that transition and will
> have adopted some core key principles about protection from government
> capture, budgetary restraint and a separation of functions, and this is
> something I wrote to you about back in December and co-sponsored a
> resolution that passed in the Senate calling for these reforms before there
> is any transition. I just wanted to make sure that I had your sense of
> whether you thought these reforms were important to complete before there
> was any movement towards it.
>
>
>
> PRITZKER: Well, Senator, I share your concern. I think the transition at
> the IANA transition is one that's important because there are down sides
> for our engagement there. Having said that, making sure that we don't--that
> ICAN can responsibly continue to carry out that function, making sure that
> it is multi-stakeholder managed and driven, making sure it meets the needs
> of customers and in a timely and efficient manner, and that we remain a
> free and open internet. All of those are priorities.
>
>
>
> We are awaiting proposals. We're not in any rush. We're working very
> carefully with ICAN, but we're waiting for proposals as to how they can
> make sure they would satisfy all those performance requirements and also
> proposals for how they will improve the accountability of ICAN so that
> there cannot be what I call a hostile takeover of the board of ICAN.
>
>
>
> Copyright 2015 CQ Transcriptions, LLC
> All Rights Reserved
> CQ Transcriptions
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> *Gregory S. Shatan **ï* *Abelman Frayne & Schwab*
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
> *gsshatan at lawabel.com <gsshatan at lawabel.com>*
>
> *ICANN-related: gregshatanipc at gmail.com <gregshatanipc at gmail.com>*
>
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>
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-- 
Sincerely
CARRIE Devorah
 562 688 2883

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